"Remembrance" by Terri Lynn Cummings

Remembrance

Terri Lynn Cummings

Mother and father

heels and hair

dresses and ties

proper as a Sunday

honest as a sermon

preserved in photos

black and white like belief

rise when bidden

by a chorus of solitude

and a thirst for voices

adrift on prairie's waves

where words rise and recede 

with menace and mercy

like Oklahoma wind

or a shell of memory

caught in sleep’s sand

unseen until stirred

by the clock’s missing hands –

one sentence a song

one word a universe

Poet’s Notes: Although orphaned later in life, I still suffer from the void of my parents’ voices and the touch of their hands. At this point, I’d even welcome the gale of an argument over our differing beliefs (something I never dreamed I would admit). This little poem has a rhythm that I tried to develop like the tick and tock of time’s clock. It’s not perfect rhythm but I think it might work.